“He wanted to know about his mother’s family, about this silly key.” He stared into his palm. “I never liked talking about it. I’m a rationalist—unapologetically, I’m afraid. He spent the summer away—had gone off in a passion, unhappy with me. Today was his homecoming. I wanted to talk to him tonight, and discuss his mother. She was such an extraordinary woman, wiser than any of us. And of course he just misses her. We all do. Why couldn’t I just tell him what he wanted to know?”

Ruth Martin was wiser than almost anyone herself; and years working in the intensive treatment unit had taught her to listen to the family. They needed whatever assurances she could give, much more than the patients. The last CT scan hadn’t looked good, but she wanted to give the father something to help him through these next dark, uncertain hours. “Whatever it was, just tell him now. He’s a captive audience, and yours is the voice he’ll most want to hear.”

But the only voice Will heard was his own, so loud in his ears that he was sure he was shouting at his brother. “Sandy, quel âge auras tu demain? You are a Virgo, aren’t you? Like Astraea. The last of the divine race to leave the earth…” Will couldn’t collate the information, but he pressed on and climbed the mountain. There was a plume of smoke hovering over the caldera. It was exhausting work; but he wanted to see the view from the top, wanted to touch the volcano’s power. He thought of Demeter scouring Etna for her daughter: he must tell her he’d found her. Where had he read “If your soul wants to be in India, to cross the ocean, in a moment it can be done”? He couldn’t find its source. His mind searched through the great hard drive that was his memory. It was Bruno: he saw the face. He neared the top of the mountain, and the air was not sulfurous, as he anticipated, but clear and scented of limes and grapevines. And a rose.

Shh! His father was speaking to him, but the words seemed to take shape for a second, then fragment. Someone else’s words were drowning them out. “Living beings will not die, but like composite bodies they are merely dissolved, like the dissolution of a mixture rather than death. If they are dissolved, it is not to be destroyed but renewed. What after all is the energy of life?”